Killings: 500 Soldiers Deployed To Mubi

Four days after the killing of 25 people, mostly students of the Federal Polytechnic Mubi in Adamawa State, about 40 military pickup vans and two articulated trailer vehicles yesterday conveyed no fewer than 500 soldiers to increase security in the area.

Our correspondent, who was in Mubi yesterday, saw a motorcade of the military going into the town even as stop and search operations have been beeped up along the 200 km Yola -Mubi road. When contacted on phone, the commander of the 23rd Armoured Brigade, Yola, Brigadier General John Nwoaga told Daily Trust that the deployment was meant to “support the security operatives that are already on ground in order fish out the criminals that killed innocent people.”

Also yesterday, Dr. Sadiq Yahaya, the Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Mubi in Adamawa State, said the killings, most of whom were students of his institution, was the worst thing that ever happened to the polytechnic in its over 30 years of existence.

The rector stated this when he granted audience to Mr. Bala Ngillari, the deputy governor of Adamawa State, who paid him a condolence visit in his office.

Meanwhile, contrary to claims that the Mubi killings were sparked by the outcome of students’ union election which gave victory to Muslim northerner against a Christian southerner, Mallam Ahmed Baba Karewal, the Dean of tudent affairs told pressmen yesterday that the attack had nothing to do with students’ union election.

Karewal, who was also a member of the electoral committee said, “The issue of election and what has happened does not correlate. Again, I have been here (in Mubi Poly) for the past 19 years and we don’t have reported cases of cultism,” he said.

Some of the students that escaped the Monday’s onslaught with injuries have been treated and discharged from the State Specialist Hospital in Yola.

Michael John and Isma’ila Yusuf, final year students of the department of management studies told our correspondent that three of their colleagues were killed.